Philhealth pushing through with premium rate hike in ’22

STATE-RUN Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (Philhealth) announced that it is finally pushing through with the scheduled premium contribution hike this year after it deferred the move last year.

Philhealth Senior Manager Rex Paul R. Recoter said on Wednesday they are duty-bound to collect the higher premium rate of 4 percent this year since Congress has yet to pass a new law allowing the deferment of scheduled premium adjustment in the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act.

Under the UHC law, premium rates should gradually increase starting from 2.75 percent in 2019 until it reaches 5 percent for both 2024 and 2025. For this year, the premium rate for this year should be at 4 percent, with the income floor fixed at P10,000 and the income ceiling set at P80,000.

Philhealth last year agreed to postpone the premium hike to 3.5

percent from 3 percent in 2020 under an “interim arrangement” that will be good only until Congress passes a new law allowing for the deferment.

“There are now pending legislative bills on the suspension of increases…the House of Representatives has already approved the suspension of premium increases. However, in the Senate, it is remained pending under Senate Bill No. 2097,” Recoter told reporters in a virtual press conference.

The said Senate bill, which was filed in March last year, is still pending second reading. Congress has adjourned its session in February until May 22 this year for the May 2022 polls and will briefly resume from May 23 to June 3 this year.

Recoter said the adjusted premium contribution rate of 4 percent shall take effect for the applicable month of June this year for employers and self-paying members using the Electronic Premium Reporting System (EPRS) and the Philhealth Member Portal (PMP), respectively.

However, the Philhealth official also said they will still be collecting the 1 percent differential per month that they were not able to collect from January to May this year.

“As of now, we are collecting the 3 percent premium rate but once the system of Philhealth is fixed as of June, next month we will start collecting 4 percent,” he said, adding that they will also collect the 1 percent differential.

Direct contributors who have already paid for their contributions at 3 percent premium rate are also given until December 31 this year to settle the 1 percent differential without interest, Recoter said.

Meanwhile, billing statements will be issued to NON-EPRS and non-pmp-registered users who shall pay only at the nearest local health insurance office.

For this year, Recoter said they are targeting to collect P189 billion in total premium contributions, which is 10.4 percent higher than their actual collection last year of P171.17 billion.

As of March this year, Philhealth has so far collected P24 billion, equivalent to only 12.7 percent of their goal for this year.

Philhealth Spokesperson and Vice President for Corporate Affairs Group Shirley B. Domingo also assured the public that the state health insurer is in a “very good” financial status.

In 2021, Philhealth booked a net income of P32.84 billion and paid P140.16 billion in benefit claims.

“Our reserve fund is constantly increasing. There was a growth of 25 percent versus last year and we are adopting new standards as prescribed by the Department of Finance, ‘yung PFRS (Philippine Financial Reporting Standards) 4 and PFRS 9 in compliance to those directives so we’re good pa rin ‘yung ating financial status in spite of the pandemic,” Domingo said.